In the first place there is the fatal shortness of view.

It is with the literature of two thousand, not with the literature of twenty, years that the true critic has to do: and no kind which--in two thousand, or two hundred, or twenty--has produced literature that is good or great can be even temporarily put aside because (as every kind of literature without exception has been again and again) it is for a time barren or fruitful only in weeds.

And any one who does not count Scott and Dumas and Thackeray among the makers of good literature must really excuse others if they simply take no further count of him.

The historical novel is a good kind, good friends, a marvellous good kind: and it has the advantage over the pure novel of manners that it is much less subject to obsolescence, if it be really well done; while it can practically annex most of the virtues of that novel of manners itself.
This excellent kind, however, had been wandering about in the wilderness--had indeed hardly got so far even as that stage, but had been a mere "bodiless childful of life in the gloom"-- for more than two thousand years before _Waverley_.

Of its earlier attempts to get into full existence we cannot say much here:[18] something on the more recent but rather abortive birth-throes has been promised, and is now due.